NASA RUNNING SCARED
Shooting the Messenger
by
David Sadler
2004.03.15

CONTACT INFORMATION:

MIKE BARA:
mbara2@enterprisemission.com

RICHARD C. HOAGLAND
THE ENTERPRISE MISSION
P.O. BOX52017
ALBUQUERQUE , NM 87181
FAX (505)332-1164

© 2004 THE ENTERPRISE MISSION

 
A messenger is under attack.  The message is being hidden.
 
The message is, life has existed and may still exist beyond the earth.  We know this now from scientific observation and the study of the data returned from both manned and unmanned missions into near-Earth space, to the moon and to the planets of our home solar system.
 
The method of attack is to destroy the credibility of the messenger without confronting the science.
 
The instrument of attack is an article published by space.com titled, "War of the Words," by Robert Roy Britt.
 
In this case, the aggressors are persons closely associated with NASA, the messenger is Richard C. Hoagland and the victim is science and the announcement of one of the greatest moments in human history since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
 
The reason this attack is occurring now is, in my opinion, because of a series of images returned recently from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.  The images depict what has been identified by multiple biologists as being very similar if not identical to a terrestrial Crinoid; a sea lily.
 
This fossil was found in a place where fossils would be expected to be found if this exposed rock ledge was located on Earth.
 
The attack article tries to distract the reader from the fossil find by dragging up all the dirt on Hoagland from the past 30 years.  This dirt is in the form of innuendo and mischaracterization of many of Hoagland's published works and biographical claims.
 
The telling characteristic of this attack is this. It attacks the messenger, distracts the reader away from current events and totally ignores the most recent work and message of the messenger --- the Opportunity rover's microphoto image of the Crinoid like fossil on the planet Mars.
 
There is no leeway for light and shadow interpretation.  These images of the fossil are point-blank, perfectly lit and exposed, high-resolution micro photographs.
 
Richard Hoagland published a very persuasive paper on this discovery within the last week on his website, www.enterprisemission.org.
 
Rather than feature this article and the fossil, space.com does a character assassination piece on the author of the fossil paper, Richard C. Hoagland.
 
Hoagland addresses many of the charges leveled against him in Britt's "War of the Words."  Given time, I'm sure Hoagland will address those not included in his letter to Britt.  Time and events always limit the scope of any work or reply, but I have confidence that Hoagland can and will respond to the remainder of the article.
 
I encourage Britt and the Hoagland detractors featured in the article to read Hoagland's response.  It is detailed with references, citations, witnesses and historical context.  Greenberg’s remarks fall into the category of innuendo and unsubstantiated claims.  A simple timeline and bibliography will show that Hoagland's defense holds water while the detractors' accusations hold none.
 
MOTIVE
 
The criticism from Greenberg and Plait to discredit Hoagland, his work and ideas regarding life beyond the earth demonstrates a long term campaign to debunk these ideas in the pool of conventional wisdom.  
 
This Hoagland Debunking Campaign should be seen, not as being a personal attack upon Hoagland, but as being a tactic in implementing the Brookings Report and keeping the official lid on the ET/life off Earth discoveries.
 
Secondly, the campaign to deprive Hoagland of deserved historical credit for these ideas and discoveries is intended to demoralize the messenger and distract him from future similar work.
 
Hoagland has been front and center in conducting science that is offensive to the Brookings recommendations.  His credibility must be destroyed without mentioning the real reason for the destruction.  The plan is to neutralize him by distracting and wearing him down.
 
By erroneously painting Hoagland as an intellectual pirate re: Europa and the Pioneer plaque (which Hoagland can and does document in his reply to Britt), the plan would be to transfer that destruction of credibility to his other claims of artificial structures on Mars and the moon, and now the recent discovery of the Crinoid like fossil on Mars.
 
Robert Britt's piece quotes astronomer Philip Plait.
 
"Any random set of numbers, when played with as Hoagland did, will yield many coincidental mathematical relationships," Plait says. "His mathematical analysis is so full of holes, flaws, and misdirection that it is completely worthless."
 
Plait should wipe the egg off his face.  He did not mention the 19.5 embedded code discovered at Cydonia was then applied to observations throughout the solar system. Britt did not mention that this discovery of HDP led to the prediction by Hoagland that an upwelling of energy similar to Jupiter's great red spot would be found on Neptune as Voyager flew by.  The 19.5 HDP code discovered at Cydonia by Hoagland and his team proved accurate in its prediction. Neptune's great dark spot was photographed and the rest is history.  Britt's article, "War of the Words," did not mention that little detail.
 
One should ask, "Why make an issue of Hoagland's Europa work now?  The action is on Mars.  Why Hoagland now?  Did his Mars fossil paper make that many waves?  Is this an effort to nullify his Mars Tidal Model that is being confirmed by our on-going Mars missions?"
 
Once these questions are asked, it is more than curious that Robert Britt did not mention the Crinoid fossil discovery and Hoagland's paper regarding the discovery.
 
Clarke’s "do not attribute to conspiracy that for which stupidity will suffice ...,” does not fit the context of what is going on here.  This smells like a long-term redirection and smear campaign just as the Crinoid fossil begins to pick up speed with the public.  Everyone I’ve shown it to thinks this could be a fossil, and if so, one of the Big Questions, has been answered.  Life has existed, and most likely still does exist, beyond the earth.
 
. . . . .
 
“Your serious criticism of NASA...”
-- Robert Britt, space.com, commenting on Richard C. Hoagland’s criticism of NASA --
 
NASA is feeling the heat of the data being returned from the missions paid for by America's taxpayers.  Much of the data has been embargoed, sequestered and obfuscated, and yet, it still shows incredible things that go unmentioned and uninvestigated by NASA.
 
Then, too, the ESA Mars Express is a new game in town. Mars Express data returns are putting NASA data into question for both image accuracy and technical data content.  
 
NASA's hurried news conference on its 'water' discoveries is too little too late, but indicative of the tense atmosphere at NASA these days.  Add to this today's (March 15, 2004) NASA announcement of the discovery of a tenth planet and one can literally feel the panic at NASA the discovery of the Mars fossil and other revelations are causing.
 
Now, the fossil image is totally ignored by mainstream media, NASA and Hoagland critics alike.
 
Hoagland is in a unique position to pressure NASA into reform.  Hoagland represents an agent of change and is, therefore, a threat to the NASA status quo, but he can't do it alone.
 
Hoagland has always done well to mention the rebels within NASA and JPL in a positive light.  By pointing out that persons of scientific integrity still abound in NASA and JPL, he has acknowledged the efforts of these real scientists as opposed to the political scientists that seem to rise to the ranks of the voice of each of these agencies.
 
NASA must be reformed.  NASA always holds out the promise that the next mission might reveal that life once existed on Mars.  This is now a laughable joke.  Dr. Gil Levin's LR team answered that question in 1976 with their life detection experiment aboard Viking.  
 
"It's hard to imagine why such bullet-proof evidence was denied for such a long time, and why those so vigorously denying it never did so by meeting the science, but merely by brushing it away. Of course, now that it must be acknowledged by all that there is liquid water on the surface of Mars, this starts those denying the validity of the Mars LR data down the slippery slope leading to life."
-- Dr. Gil Levin, Chief Project Scientist on the Viking Labeled Release Experiment
 
Every time our Mars landers and orbiters find evidence of previous life or current life, the discovery is dismissed with the wave of a hand, not science.  Then holding out the promise that the NEXT mission might find life or the evidence of past life serves as the impetus to fund the next mission.  For NASA and its contractors, it's always the NEXT mission, the NEXT round of appropriations of taxpayer dollars that might yield the great discovery.
 
I submit that the next mission is not needed. All we need to do is utilize the current missions.  From our orbiters:  retarget those areas of exceptional interest for a high-res, multiple angle look.  From our rovers: more fossil hunting and water-table digging.  Let's inspect the undersides of those rocks a bit closer.
 
NASA is always showing us canyons, craters and volcanoes.  We've seen enough of that on multiple planets and moons.  What we haven't inspected in high-resolution detail (1.3 meter) are these 'tubes' that NASA calls dunes.  What are these structures?  I want to see a closer look at the tube-dune just below the crater with a golf ball (geodesic dome?) inside it on MGS frame m1501228.  While they are at it, I want a 1.3 meter resolution multiple angle of the golf ball.  If NASA can't do it, perhaps the ESA Mars Express can.
 
I submit we have already discovered that life once existed on Mars and may currently exist.  An open investigation of data already in our hands and a careful acquisition of additional data from our current missions on and around Mars will bear this out.
 
Hoagland has been instrumental in making this point for years.  He will go down in history as a scientist who braved the status quo, the conventional scientific dogma of the day and forged ahead to great discoveries.  Always controversial, and perhaps sometimes wrong, but always doing what science should do.  Observe, test, explore and discover.  This will be done --- Greenberg and Plait notwithstanding...
 
David Sadler
2002 GOP congressional candidate, 12th CD/Illinois
www.david-sadler.org
 

David Sadler ran for Congress in 2002.  He would have sought a seat on the House Science and Technology Committee.  He owns Diversified Computer Applications, Inc.  -- a custom, client/server software development firm for Fortune 100 corporate clients.
 
During the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, his dad would let him stay home from school to watch the missions on TV. He has been a life long advocate of science and bemoans the current state of the politicized, militarized and corporate owned civilian space program.